Bollywood film breaks new ground on sex in India

MUMBAI (Reuters Life!) - A new Bollywood film has put the spotlight on changing sexual mores in small-town India, unsettling conservative filmgoers with spy cam footage and pushing the limits of the country's censorship board.

"Love Sex aur Dhokha" (Love Sex and Betrayal) is the latest in a series of avant-garde offerings stripping the Indian film industry of decades of inhibition and dramatically changing the traditional formula of song-and-dance romances and violent revenge sagas.

The film, which opened in Indian cinemas last week with an adults-only rating, has courted controversy with blurred visuals of a naked woman and voyeuristic sequences in its trailers.

Director Dibakar Banerjee says "Love Sex aur Dhokha" is more about a change in attitudes than it is about sex.

He says the film explores the lack of privacy in the modern world -- one where even mobile phones can capture, and broadcast, intimate moments.

"What my camera is doing is that it's recording a story that is changing in front of the camera," says Banerjee. "Earlier, sex used to be behind closed doors but now that is changing."

A decade ago, when a coy couple were about to kiss on screen, the camera would glide to two flowers brushing against each other or birds pecking at each other's beaks. Indian audiences just assumed the couple had done the deed.

In that sense, Banerjee's film, with a bunch of unknown actors, broke new ground with an extended sex scene which didn't quite escape the censor board's scissors.
Continued...